Posted on 11/28/2015 3:57:04 PM PST by Jack Hydrazine
BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAINS - Harry Mac McClintock - 1928
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovKk_kPmAk4
HALLELUJAH! I’M A BUM - Harry MAC McClintock - 1928
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uKbIkYGsIg
Interesting, wonder how many followed it?
Seemed to generally work until the mental homes were emptied
Don’t know. You’d have to ask the FReepers here that are older than dirt.
Good lord, these were hobos? Not even “normal” members of society follow hese rules.
Yep, there’s a few.
Sounds like rules for modern liberals.
Every welfare recipient should be held to this standard!
Interesting. Too bad bums don’t act this way today.
In the 50,s, Grandpa used to take one of us Grandkids for a walk every evening. There was a blueberry bush by the railroad tracks and we went to pick berries in season. Since it was by railroad tracks, hobos used to sit there. Grandpa would have me wait while he asked the hobos to vacate the area for awhile. They always did and remained out of sight until I had a few berries.
Etymology[edit]
The origin of the term is unknown. According to etymologist Anatoly Liberman, the only certain detail about its origin is the word was first noticed in American English circa 1890.[1] Liberman points out that many folk etymologies fail to answer the question: “Why did the word become widely known in California (just there) by the early Nineties (just then)?”[1] Author Todd DePastino has suggested it may be derived from the term hoe-boy meaning “farmhand”, or a greeting such as Ho, boy![3] Bill Bryson suggests in Made in America (1998) that it could either come from the railroad greeting, “Ho, beau!” or a syllabic abbreviation of “homeward bound”.[4] It could also come from the words “homeless boy”. H. L. Mencken, in his The American Language (4th ed., 1937), wrote:
Tramps and hobos are commonly lumped together, but see themselves as sharply differentiated. A hobo or bo is simply a migratory laborer; he may take some longish holidays, but soon or late he returns to work. A tramp never works if it can be avoided; he simply travels. Lower than either is the bum, who neither works nor travels, save when impelled to motion by the police.
Source: Wikipedia
There’s a big difference between a bum and a hobo.
L
My Mom grew up on a farm in the 1920s & 1930s. They had no money, but usually had food. They kept a table for the bums. Most nights, 2-3 would show up. They would lend a hand with chores and get a home cooked meal. They never stole anything, were nice to the kids, and said please & thank you.
Apparently. A big difference.
Jack Dempsey was a hobo in his teens, and he said he always had to be prepared to defend himself from older and larger men. And while it wasn’t something someone would be explicit about in those days, it was clear from his description that was wasn’t just being robbed he had to defend himself against.
My Mom had similar stories.Back then a lot of decent people were just down on their luck.
Sad, but true.
Ha...I’m not older than dirt yet, but approaching it.
As a kid the railroad went through our town and there was a rural area by the tracks where most of them stayed. They knew the homes they could come to where folks would find them something to eat. They didn’t come into town after dark or late in the evening, if they did the cops would tell them to be out before the sun went down and they meant it.
Don’t ever remember a problem and my grandmother was one of the people they came to for a bite.
Of course those were the days when there were mental institutions and the Hobos I came across were always polite and kept to themselves.
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